McDonald’s proudly displays a list of number of customers served. The current estimate is that the company has sold more than a quarter-trillion burgers, making them the scourge of cattle everywhere. It also leads to a different question. Which Disney attractions serve the most customers? Today, we’ll take a look at Magic Kingdom. Let’s see which of their rides are the biggest crowd-pleasers in terms of throughput. Note that I’m not including the Walt Disney World Railroad or the Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover since they’re specifically designed for transportation, even if the PeopleMover wound up as a ride.
7. Seven Dwarfs Mine Train
One of the things that you’ll notice on this list is that common sense is a factor in determining ride throughput. Any attraction that can have multiple ride carts in motion simultaneously is better than one that can’t. Similarly, the rides that have larger ride cart capacity are better.
Let’s consider Seven Dwarfs Mine, the newest attraction at Magic Kingdom. Its coaster carts have a clever design of 2 x 2 x 5. What I mean by that is the trains divide into sections. Each row holds two theme park tourists, and each cart has two rows. What’s novel about the Mine Train is that it tethers five different carts together. These combine to form a super-cart that holds a total of 20 people. That’s the maximum occupancy, a good one at that.
Working against its throughput is that this attraction has a strange limitation for a roller coaster. It’s only 2,000 feet long, which is tiny for a coaster. In fact, it would have been on the small side in the mid-1990s, much less today. The short track limits the number of coasters that can operate at once. If Disney had built a track that was twice as long, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train would be in the discussion for best throughput. Instead, it hosts about 1,500 people or about 21,000 daily riders. That’s good enough for seventh best attraction at Magic Kingdom, but we’re going to see a lot better. Note that I am making one major assumption here, which is a 14-hour park day. That’s the case when Magic Kingdom opens at 9 a.m. and then closes at 11 p.m. I’ve based all daily calculations off of these hours of operation.
6. Jungle Cruise
The boats at Jungle Cruise embody everything that’s great about Disney Imagineering. Each vehicle flows steadily downstream, allowing guests to witness all of nature’s ferocity…and hear some of the worst jokes ever told. What’s brilliant about the boats is that they’re on rails. You’ve likely noticed this during one of your journeys. Many captains take their hands off the steering wheel during the ride. They can do this because the steering wheel does absolutely nothing.
Jungle Cruise isn’t technically an Omnimover, a technology that Imagineers wouldn’t invent until a decade later. It’s functionally similar, though. Disney controls the throughput by transporting each ride vehicle at a steady pace. Better yet, they can have a lot of these boats in the water at the same time.
Each of these cruise ships can host about 20 people, depending on the size of the individuals. That particular variance is unusual for Disney ride carts; it’s also something that they’ve tried to eliminate since the first days of Disneyland. Most motion vehicles at Disney have a fixed capacity. Jungle Cruise has variables, but we can make solid estimates. For a seven-minute boat ride plus the time needed to load and unload, Disney can host about 1,650 people per hour. That’s 23,100 worth of traffic in a day.
5. Space Mountain
Here’s where things get a bit counterintuitive. Space Mountain doesn’t have the single cart capacity of Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. It’s not even close. That’s because it’s a vehicle with three single-seat rows. Two of them depart simultaneously, meaning that Space Mountain only satisfies six customers per trip. That’s…not a lot.
The trick to why this attraction has such great throughput is an old banking secret. Space Mountain makes it up in volume. The ride has 3,035 feet of track, and it takes place in the dark. It also goes a modest 28 miles per hour. It also has 30 coaster trains, a ridiculously large number. For all of these reasons, Space Mountain can have a lot of trains in place at once. It’s even automated – the first automated roller coaster ever – and offers cast members complete control of each cart.
Space Mountain is a giant feeder chain of coaster carts. You just don’t notice it during the ride because you’re traveling in the dark. In fact, the only way that you could notice is if you count all of the loading done in the span of a 10-minute wait. It’s only at this point that you’ll appreciate how much throughput Space Mountain has. It can host 1,850 people per hour, which equals 25,900 satisfied customers over the course of the day.
4. Under the Sea – Journey of the Little Mermaid
Image: DisneyDisney deserves a lot of credit for this attraction. They introduced it in 2011 as the perfect combination of thematically satisfying and crowd-pleasing. The unstated purpose of Under the Sea is to pull traffic toward a different part of Magic Kingdom. To achieve this goal, Disney had to employ one of their favorite techniques: the Omnimover.
The Omnimover is a critical concept at Disney theme parks. These ride carts aren’t individual in nature. Instead, they’re tethered (well, welded) together and placed on a conveyor belt. That way, each “vehicle” moves at a set pace, making throughput easily calculable. Disney handles attraction crowd control best with Omnimovers.
In the case of Under the Sea, up to three guests board a clamshell vehicle. It’s A) adorable and B) part of an integrated system of ride carts that will travel down the conveyor belt from the loading area until the unloading area. The only thing that stops the process is if Disney has to stop the entire conveyor belt, which happens more often than you might think. Anyone in a wheelchair could need assistance since the Omnimover departure process also works on a timer. Even with these hiccups, Under the Sea serves 2,050 customers per hour, giving it a daily allotment of 28,700.
3. It’s a Small World
Two out of the top three Magic Kingdom rides in terms of throughput are NOT Omnimover attractions. You probably believe at least one of them is, though. That’s because the controlled boat ride concept is similar, even when something doesn’t technically qualify as an Omnimover.
Whereas Under the Sea pretends to take you on an underwater adventure, It’s a Small World actually does take you out on the sea. You ride along on what Walt Disney once described as his Little Boat Ride, listening to an inescapable song all the while. Each boat holds 22-24 people (more if some are small children), and Disney can unleash dozens of them in the water at the same time. For that reason, It’s a Small World has insane throughput. I tried to count this the last time I was at Walt Disney World and even asked some staff about it. Their numbers struck me as a bit ambitious, so I’m going a bit lower here.
My belief is that It’s a Small World infects 2,820 people per hour with an insufferable earworm. That’s 39,480 people each night that can’t get to sleep because of that infernal song. And yes, if you’re paying attention, you likely noticed that the numbers spiked from fourth place to the top three. These are the true throughput kings of Magic Kingdom.
2. Pirates of the Caribbean
Cosmologically, Pirates of the Caribbean is so similar to It’s a Small World that I struggle to mention anything new and different about it. The key thing is that some people ride It’s a Small World once and then never want to think about it again. Pirates of the Caribbean’s appeal is eternal.
This attraction is also similar to Jungle Cruise in that it’s not technically finite in terms of guests per boat. It has an estimable range, though. The average boat should host 18 people most of the time. It could go higher when the lines are long enough that Disney needs to pack people onboard. As for boats in the water, Pirates of the Caribbean has so many scenes and so much space between scenes that it keeps a mighty fleet of pirate vessels in operation. My belief is that 2,920 people ride each hour, which equals 40,880 over the course of a full day.
1. Haunted Mansion
Given the comments above, you shouldn’t feel surprised by the winner here. Omnimovers are the best throughput machines Disney has invented thus far. They’re perfect at satisfying hundreds of customers simultaneously. The only downside to Omnimovers is the size of the tracks. Disney tries to keep them smaller to improve the functionality and reduce the odds of mechanical failure. That’s why the Little Mermaid is 624 feet in length.
For The Haunted Mansion, Disney was testing a new technology. They were ambitious rather than conservative in the attempt. The track for The Haunted Mansion is 960 feet. That’s roughly 54 percent, meaning that it (theoretically) adds 54 percent more throughput. For various reasons involving improvements in technology over time, Under the Sea is a bit more efficient than its older counterpart, though. That’s why The Haunted Mansion doesn’t quite match the expected throughput. The number is still pretty shocking, though.
In an average hour, The Haunted Mansion services 3,000 guests. Over the course of a day, that’s 42,000 happy haunts that jump into a Doombuggy and have the time of their lives. This ride is so smartly constructed that it doubles the throughput of the number seven attraction on the list. On any given day, if you ask a guest what they got to ride during a Magic Kingdom visit, you now understand why the likeliest answer is The Haunted Mansion. It entertains more theme park tourists than anything at the park…but there’s always room for more. Any volunteers?
